The Mid Autumn Festival is also popularly known as the Mooncake or Lantern Festival. This year, the festival takes place from 11 Sep to 10 Oct. On the 15th day of the eighth Chinese lunar month (which occurs on 3 Oct 2012), the moon would be at its fullest. This would be the day the Chinese celebrates the Mid Autumn Festival, during which they would enjoy moon cakes as festival treats while children would carry lanterns (lit by either candles or electrically with bulbs or LEDs these days). The festival is celebrated in Chinatown with festive street light ups and bazaar stalls selling mooncakes, pomelos, tea and an assortment of festive goodies. In Chinese tradition and believe, the complete moon (月圆) symbolizes family’s togetherness and unity.

Urban Sketchers Singapore is going to participate in this years’ festivity by sketching Chinatown during the September’s sketchwalk. Sketch as you bask in the cool of the evening and be enchanted by the colorful lantern light-ups and themed decorations.

We will meet at 5pm at the steps leading to Chinatown Food Center on the South Side facing Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (you will see many elderlies congregating there to play a game of chess) and proceed to walk the streets of Chinatown along Pagoda Street, Temple Street and Smith Street where the main activities would be. You may stop anywhere to sketch or you could congregate together if you are uncomfortable to sketch alone.

favourite art quotes

"I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious." Andrew Wyeth

"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies." Le Corbusier

"If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." Michelangelo

"From the time I was six, I was in the habit of sketching things I saw around me, and around the age of fifty, I began to work in earnest, producing numerous designs. It was not until after my seventieth year, however, that I produced anything of significance. At the age of seventy-three, I began to grasp the underlying structure of birds and animals, insects and fish, and the way trees and plants grow. Thus, if I keep up my efforts, I will have an even better understanding when I am eighty, and by ninety will have penetrated to the heart of things. At one hundred, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live a decade beyond that, everything I paint-every dot and line-will be alive. I ask the god of longevity to grant me a life long enough to prove this true." Hokusai, postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji [translated by Carol Morland]

"I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death." Degas

"The artist is primarily a visual person. I have always believed that there is no essential difference between the basic visual relationships that concern the fine artist, the graphic artist, the industrial designer, and the architect. The difference is in the degree of complexity of visual organization demanded by each situation. Beyond that, there are the materials and techniques of each area. I am convinced that there is a visual discipline suitable for all of these areas. It is based on the exciting concept that there can be order and structure to the organization of visual expression." Rowena Reed Kostellow

"I've always rated doodles as a method to capture or generate solutions to a creative problem. I also doodle in meetings and although refused to be intimidated into giving up, I always felt very slightly guilty. No one ever asked me to actually stop. I suspect they were caught between the belief that I wasn't paying attention and the desire to enjoy the final results. Anyway its good that some scientist thinks it helps retain information. Why do scientists tot up the numbers and announce the result like they've discovered something new? . . . Most creatives I know are aware of the value of doodling and many have given thought to the mechanics and psychology behind it. None, that I know anyway, felt the need to publish an academic paper though." Alan Scott